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Blast from the Past by Kinky Friedman Published by Simon and Shuster 256 pages, 1998 
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A Long, Strange Trip
Many years ago, I introduced my mother to a man who was a fanatical reader and collector of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She expressed mild interest in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series and asked his opinion about which of the Holmes stories would be best for a reader to begin with. "The first one," he replied icily. That answer might seem obvious. But in the case of the 11 books chronicling the adventures of country musician/sleuth Kinky Friedman, it would be dead wrong. For in the Friedman oeuvre, the first book is the last -- or at least, the most recent. The just-released Blast from the Past, as its title and psychedelic cover suggest, is a flashback about Kinky's first foray into the world of crime. Be forewarned: Kinky Friedman, the self-described "canny, crepuscular, cat-loving crime solver" in Blast from the Past is easily confused with the canny, crepuscular, cat-loving mystery writer of the same name. Both author and character barged onto the New York scene in the 1970s, sporting black cowboy hats and cigars and fronting a hip country music band called the Texas Jewboys. While they're both Texas born, they have more experience skewering sacred cows than rounding up real ones. But in the 1980s, Richard "Kinky" Friedman put aside the guitar and turned to the typewriter. Thus was born his alter-ego, the fictitious Kinky, an accidental detective so dazed by espresso, Jameson Irish whiskey, monkey dust, and the pounding of modern dance classes going on in the apartment upstairs that his role in mysteries is less solution than narration. But what narration it is! Friedman is a master of the humorous mystery. In novels such as A Case of Lone Star (1987), Armadillos & Old Lace (1994), and The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover (1996), Friedman has successfully crossbred the incisive whine of the perpetually annoyed New Yorker with the rich drawl of a Southern back-porch storyteller. The result is wily and charming. From the opening chapter of Blast from the Past, here's his pithy description of the city that never sleeps (and a good explanation of why): A horn was honking in a somewhat irregular series of very loud, very long blasts. Like love, like trouble, like the extended stay of a hideous housepest, just when you thought it was over for good, it started up again. This paragraph not only introduces Friedman's love-hate relationship with Lower Manhattan, it introduces the book, a story-within-a-story whose perfunctory plot (somebody is trying to kill 60s radical Abbie Hoffman) starts with love and moves rapidly into a lot of trouble. Along the way it involves enough hilarious "housepests" to fill a Roach Motel. Writing a prequel to the Kinky series gives author Friedman, who has never been averse to repeating himself from book to book, the opportunity to add even more fringe and embroidery to the lore surrounding sleuth Kinky's significant relationships. We find out why the character moved from his friend Larry "Ratso" Slomani's couch to his own loft on Vandam Street, who introduced him to Jameson whiskey, and how he met the mysterious and multitalented private eye Steve Rambam -- rabbinical student, medical student, and student at the police academy. And we meet Judy, the prototypical Friedman girlfriend: she starts the book in bed with Kinky (only in this book, it's a couch) and spends the balance of the story regretting it. In the Kinkster's world, women are wildly enthusiastic about sex but less than enthusiastic about him. Many of the characters in Blast are based on real people -- some living, some dead. How Friedman gets away with this isn't clear. But it certainly adds a deeper layer of meaning to the otherwise lighthearted story. Abbie Hoffman, evading the Feds by posing as environmental activist Barry Freed (which he did in real life), comes across as inspirational, irreverent, and tragic. A practical joker, the fictional Hoffman announces himself at a friend's apartment by bellowing into the lobby intercom, "FBI! OPEN UP!" Later, sure he is being tailed by an assassin, a desperate Hoffman/Freed has to be subdued with Valium. "Who is he anyway?" asks the clueless Judy. For Judy, trouble is only beginning. Her old boyfriend shows up -- even more of a problem than might be expected, since he is supposed to have died in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the sniper dogging Hoffman comes after Kinky as well. When a bomb (meant for the visiting Abbie or for Kinky himself?) destroys Kinky's loft, the underemployed and once again homeless musician makes the fateful stumble into the role of detective. And he reluctantly resumes residence on Ratso's gamy couch, noting gloomily that the sofa's earlier occupants, folksinger Phil Ochs and rock guitarist Michael Bloomfield, had both met untimely deaths. But of course, the Kinkster survives his flashback to the 70s and wakes up in 1998. "How long have I been out of it?" the groggy detective asks Stephanie, his girlfriend of the moment, while taking advantage of his position flat on the floor to look up her short skirt. Fans of the obnoxious Kinkster have propelled Friedman's recent books to the top of the publishers' lists -- which is far higher than his songs ever made it on the country charts. Though Friedman (with musician friends such as Willie Nelson) still performs at benefits for libraries and animal-rescue organizations, he spends most of his time writing and promoting the Kinky novels. He promises that there are already two more of them in the works. In a contemporary mystery field crowded with look-alike sleuths, the impossible Kinky has no peers. If he did, they'd probably flee to avoid the cigar smoke or guilt by association. If you've been wondering about the Friedman books and want advice on where to start, Blast from the Past is as fine a place as any. | October 1998
KAREN G. ANDERSON is the managing editor of the Seattle-based magazine Northwest Health. Her writing has also appeared in Psychology Today, The Hartford Courant, and The Boston Globe.
To learn more about Kinky Friedman and his offbeat career, check out his Web site. |
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